


remembrance

by perfectlyrose



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 07:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14100162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlyrose/pseuds/perfectlyrose
Summary: Bill and the Doctor both lost someone in the Battle of Canary Wharf. They don’t know that it’s the same person who left indelible marks on both of their lives





	remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this post](http://badwolfxoncomingstorm.tumblr.com/post/163301511058/imagine-the-doctor-visits-the-memorial-for-canary) by badwolfxoncomingstorm on tumblr

Growing up on the estate was never a glamorous thing. Bill had more memories of overheard shouted arguments, half-seen fights, and desperate faces than she could even begin to count. She also had a carefully guarded horde of well-worn and wonderful memories that she liked to turn over in her head.

Quite a few of them featured the pretty blonde neighbor girl that Bill had looked up to from the moment they met on the swings one day. She’d been seven and the neighbor girl, Rose Tyler, had been ten at that first meeting. What Bill remembered most about those early days of friendship was Rose’s smile and her kindness and the way she would swing back and forth slowly, eyes trained on the sky as she and Bill talked about all the impossible adventures they swore they’d go on one day.

Bill harbored a small crush on her friend for ages. She knew it wasn’t ever going to come to anything and she was never going to jeopardize her friendship with Rose for anything, but Rose was gorgeous and had a lightning flash smile that hit her in the heart every time.

The two of them met up on the swings at nightfall when they could to talk and to avoid the realities of their world for as long as they could.

(Their sanctuary was often pierced by sirens wailing by or a drunk wandering too close for comfort but it was theirs.)

Then Rose was sixteen and gone, run off with a boy in a band named Jimmy that Bill thought sounded like bad news. Bill missed her more than she realized she would. She tried to tell herself that Rose was off finding the adventure she’d always dreamed of but the nagging feeling that this wasn’t the case ate at her.

Rose came back and Bill hated that she had been right. Her friend was a little more cautious now, a little less likely to share the wild dreams of the world outside of the estate that she used to spin tales about. 

(It’s Rose’s soft warnings about not leaving school and the regret that Bill could see in her eyes that drives her to keep studying even when people tell her she’ll never get anywhere with her nose in a book.)

She and Rose had fallen back into the easy flow of their friendship when she disappears again. This time no one had any idea where she was and Bill’s eyes sting every time she sees one of the missing posters that Rose’s mum has pasted up everywhere.

(She wants to talk to someone about how much she misses her friend, about how worried she is, but she’d never been close to Jackie or any of Rose’s other friends so she just bottles everything up.)

(She tells her mum about Rose over several cups of tea.)

This time when Rose comes back, she’s happy. She finds Bill and hugs her and stumbles her way through a nonsensical apology for just disappearing without a word for a whole year.

After that, she was only on the estate occasionally for a visit. She always made time to find Bill and catch up. She practically radiated happiness and tells Bill stories about travelling and brings her back near-impossible trinkets.

(Rose just winked and laughed when Bill peppered her with a million questions about each one and refused to explain, saying she didn’t want to ruin the mystery.)

(Bill was a tiny bit jealous that Rose has found an escape from this place.)

(She was  also a tiny bit jealous because Rose was traveling with someone who was not her. Someone who was tall and good-looking and male and who Rose was obviously head over heels in love with.)

(But Rose was happy and Bill was happy because of that and the jealousy and pinch of hurt faded quickly.)

It was a couple years worth of sporadic visits before Canary Wharf happened. Bill read the list of the dead with trepidation, expecting to see friends and acquaintances.

She did not expect to see Rose Tyler listed just beneath her mum’s name. 

It shouldn’t hurt so much to lose a friend who was in and out of her life so much, who wasn’t even one of her best mates, really. It was just that when Rose was gone traveling, Bill always knew she’d be back with a hug and stories that were as fantastical as the ones she’d spun years ago on the estate swings.

Now she was just  _ gone _ and the world seemed a bit dimmer without Rose Tyler and her lightning smile in it.

Bill moved on, of course she does, but sometimes she heard someone laugh a certain way or glimpsed a certain mischievous twinkle in someone’s eyes and she’s hit with a wave of remembrance. Six years on it was mostly warm and fond, all of those good memories instead of the painful ones, but there’s still a seed of grief at the core of it.

Sometimes, when she was  sitting in on the Doctor’s lectures, before he became her tutor and friend, she thought about how Rose would have loved this. She would’ve snuck in right beside Bill and been enraptured by the eccentric lecturer.

(He talked about so many of the things she and Rose had dreamed about back in their swingset days. It was the stars and travel and why people did the things they did. He had science to go with it of course, but the heart was the same.)

(She swore that he sometimes said some of the same things Rose had back when the other girl was too tired on a visit home to edit her tales and filter herself.)

Before long, Bill was swept up in the adventure that was the Doctor. Traveling with him was brilliant and mad and exciting and almost everything she’d ever wanted. The alien git had more than his share of secrets but she left them alone for the most part, not wanting to probe what could very well be open wounds.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

The seventh anniversary of the Battle of Canary Wharf was a crisp, clear day. Campus was subdued, people going through their daily activities with a soberness not usually witnessed. Bill had her weekly meeting with the Doctor and arrives right on time, as usual.

She handed in a paper he’d assigned her last week and he glanced at it for a few seconds before setting it down on his desk. “You can go early, today. I don’t have anything for you this afternoon.”

“You feeling alright?” Bill asked, a bit off-kilter at the dismissal. He’d never cut their meeting short before. 

“No, terribly ill. Time for you to go. We’ll make up the time later. Have a super handy time machine for things like this.”

He’d been on edge in his lecture that morning too but she hadn’t thought anything of it since she was in the same mood. But now, he wasn’t meeting her eyes, like he was afraid she’d see right through him and his flimsy excuses, like he might shatter if anyone really looked at him right now.

“Alright, I’ll see you later then,” she said, gathering her things and heading towards the door. “Hope you feel better.”

The Doctor just nodded and she shut the door behind her, absently wondering what the Time Lord was hiding now.

Bill gripped the small posy of daisies she’d bought on her way down to the memorial site. Rose had always loved the cheery flowers so Bill usually tried to take some for her on the anniversary of the battle.

It didn’t even occur to her that the reason the Doctor was on edge was the same reason she was until she ran into him at the Canary Wharf Memorial, standing right in front of the portion of the memorial where Rose’s name was inscribed amongst the rest of battle’s dead .

“You lose someone too?” she asked quietly as she walked up next to him.

The Doctor startles and Bill thought it was probably the first time she’d ever gotten the drop on him.

He nodded and answered with a gruff affirmative.

They both stood in silence, staring at the wall, at the permanent remembrance of those gone too soon.

“Who did you lose?” he asked finally.

Bill told him about her childhood friend who was older than her and was somehow always there for her even when she was gone a lot, who always seemed to believe in Bill and accept her for exactly who she was while also encouraging her to be even more.

She told him about how she disappeared for ages and went off traveling with some bloke and how Bill hadn’t even known she was back in London for the battle until she saw her name on the list of the dead.

Bill gestured with the daisies in her hand. “Daisies were her favorite flowers. She was always complaining that no one ever got them for her so I try to bring her some on the anniversary.”

She peeked up at the Doctor and found him staring straight at the wall.

“I used to bring daisies as well. They were my… my friend’s favorite flower as well.”

“Did they travel with you? This friend?”

The Doctor nodded and Bill saw his empty hand clench at his side. “We were at Canary Wharf. Right in the middle of things, trying to stop them. She saved everyone but was lost because of it.”

Bill let the silence hang for a few moments.

“She was special to you wasn’t she?” she asked, studying his face in case his answer wasn’t verbal. He didn’t often share much of himself, of his past, and she didn’t think that was going to change now just because she’d caught him in a vulnerable moment.

The Doctor swallowed hard and pressed his lips together. He nodded.

“Your friend was special to you too, wasn’t she?”

“More than she ever knew, I think,” she said.

“What was her name? Your friend?” The Doctor asked.

Bill stepped forward and set the daisies at the base of the wall amongst all the other flowers and mementos. She reached out a hand and pressed her fingers to the name. The stone around it was smooth, as if someone else came here to remember as well, pressing fingers against letters that could never come close to encompassing the person they represented.

“Rose. Her name was Rose Tyler.”

Bill looked over her shoulder when the Doctor stayed silent and quickly straightened when she saw how pale he was. It looked like she could knock him over with a feather, if she were so inclined.

“Doctor?” She took a step towards him, hands outstretched as she tried to gauge what was wrong.

“You said Rose Tyler.”

“I did, yeah. She was my mate, the one I was telling you about. We lived on the same estate growing up.”

The Doctor just kept staring at her so she continued. “Why? Did you know her or something?”

His mouth opened and then closed again, like he couldn’t find the right words. Bill didn’t think she’d ever seen the oft loquacious professor at such a loss. She couldn’t even begin to understand the emotions swirling in those fathomless eyes of his as he stared at the same name on the wall that her fingers had traced moments ago.

“Rose was my friend too. The one I lo-”

The wail of a siren, that familiar sound, drowned out the last word the Doctor spoke. Bill wasn’t sure if he’d said “lost” or another word that started the same way.

She understood either way.

**Author's Note:**

> Bill and Rose’s canonical age difference is slightly larger (five years) but I’m playing with canon anyways so I made it three years.


End file.
